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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

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I agree. Seeing stuff like this take hold is both scary and tragic to me.

It feels like a genuine turning point for our way of life when the government can control your life unless you have a brand new medical procedure which, with no hyperbole, can kill healthy people at no significant risk from the disease.

I’m amazed how popular it seems to be here and the fact you have downvotes. This community like to tear companies like Facebook apart but cannot see the risks and impacts of what we are doing here?

I grew up in Australia, thinking Americans were crazy for their obsession with guns. In the past year my opinion changed completely, after seeing the US states with high gun ownership like Florida and Texas are some of the few places in the world where this authoritarianism hasn't taken hold.

I'm not sure those states are good examples when their governors were happy to impose restrictions on private businesses and remove their freedom of choice wrt proof of vaccination - to the complaint of the Cato Institute, no less.

The US is a bit different than portrayed. Even in Illinois, most of the state is hard red. They have “2nd amendment sanctuary counties”. Masking, gun laws, etc aren’t followed in the country, even suburbs.

Honestly, there’s a good reason people in Illinois believe their elections are stolen (there’s lots of historic proof). It’s an open secret that the democrats steal the state. If you ask around, almost everyone believes it.

To be fair, Illinois has jailed a significant number of governors lol

I'm amazed at the amount of discussion, period. The article factually laid out the small amount of information encoded in the QR code, walked through the data format, and showed it to be pretty minimal and well-designed. No URLs, no hidden trackers, no evil ad salesman selling your browser history. Yet here we are at the #1 spot on HN and almost 400 comments. Full of conspiracy theories, COVID-downplayers and anti-vaxxers. I'm trying to connect the dots between a QR code and the New World Order, and I'm coming up empty. I thought HN was above this and wish this stuff could stay on Facebook and Twitter.

> I'm amazed at the amount of discussion, period. The article factually laid out the small amount of information encoded in the QR code, walked through the data format, and showed it to be pretty minimal and well-designed. No URLs, no hidden trackers, no evil ad salesman selling your browser history. Yet here we are at the #1 spot on HN and almost 400 comments. Full of conspiracy theories, COVID-downplayers and anti-vaxxers. I'm trying to connect the dots between a QR code and the New World Order, and I'm coming up empty. I thought HN was above this and wish this stuff could stay on Facebook and Twitter.

No one cares about the qr codes themselves and I think you are willingly ignoring the main point. The problem is that you need to show a government issued "pass" to access almost any public space. You may be okay with that but please don't pretend it's nothing new and it's always been like that. Asking for a digital certificate to live your life normally is unprecedented, but I guess at least it's not ads? Who talked about that anyways, can't both things be bad? I guess what the NSA does is alright since it's unrelated to a new world order or ad tracking?

As for antivaxxers or covid downplayers, Imo pretending this whole apparatus is needed is the real anti vaxxer position. The vaccines work, and if someone doesn't want to take them the risk is on them. Downplaying covid now is the pro vax position, while yours imply vaccines barely work so we need precedent setting measures like these. I mean the comment that started this subthread is literally saying that vaccines work so the straw man you are building is absurd

It's because we let them say opinions were more important than freedoms....that's that. once people drank the coolaid....Jonestown was on....we are watching the suicide of our society in the name of progress......because to not progress is (enter fad strawman of the day - .... right now ultra right wing conspiracy....)

Using ellipses as one's main form of punctuation is the present-day equivalent of penning one's Letter To The Editor in green or purple ink.

We need this passport so that we maximize the potential of vaccines and minimize that of virus mutations. I say this selfishly: I want to travel and when the risk that visitors will bringing a supertransmissible virus deadly to the population is high (and 0.5% is a shitton of people), we'll again have lockdowns and we'll be sitting at home. I don't want any of that. That's why I got vaccinated and I'm happy to have a way of proving that it's very unlikely for me to bring crap that will kill people down the line

> we'll again have lockdowns

Enforced by an out of control government.

This is such a funny argument. In my ears it rings as "We need to comply with our abusers so they'll stop abusing us."

In what world is stopping a deadly disease that also paralyzes healthcare for everyone abuse? The virus is abusing us, that's for sure. Unfortunately it doesn't quite adhere to law, otherwise tens of thousands of people more would still be alive in my country. The only way to stand up to a force of nature like that is to stick to some common sense rules as a society, like "let's avoid crowds" or "let's all get vaccines".

> a deadly disease that also paralyzes healthcare

VS.

a tyrannical government that is ever encroaching on our freedoms using scare tactics.

It used to be terrorism.

I suppose we're both kinda motivated by fear here, I'm just way more afraid of losing my freedoms than I am COVID.

The same messaging system that brought us the `terror meter` and pegged it to red

https://www.activistpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/terr...

is providing similar hyperbolic messaging about COVID.

Terrorism very broadly kills a couple hundred people a year in the developed world, and has been around that for a long time. Obviously it's a bogus excuse most of the time.

Meanwhile, this particular virus has correspondingly killed ~10 000 times more people. That is not hyperbole. That's not even comparable to terrorism, much more like a war instead.

How many people died of the flu this year?

Perhaps somewhat paradoxically, much fewer than usual. Partly because some that might have, in stead died from Covid-19, and partly because the countermeasures against SARS-CoV are also very effective against a lot of other diseases like the flu.

Why; does that have anything to do with anything? Naah, thought not.

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